Mōkapu Peninsula was divided into three ahupua‘a – Kailua, Kāne‘ohe and He‘eia – these were extensions of the ahupua‘a across the large basin of Kāne‘ohe Bay.

The original name of the peninsula “Moku-Kapu” was derived from two Hawaiian words: “moku” (island) and “kapu” (sacred or restricted.) “Mokapu” is the contraction of “Moku Kapu” which means “Sacred or Forbidden Island.”

In ancient times, three ponds separated Mōkapu Peninsula from the rest of Kaneohe: Nuʻupia, Halekou and Kalupuhi Fishponds, they date to between 1300-1600 AD.

Prior to Polynesian settlement, the ponds were thought to be either a shallow open channel between Kāneʻohe and Kailua Bays, making Mōkapu an island, or an embayment off Kāneʻohe Bay with Mōkapu connected to Oʻahu by a thin coastal barrier dune.

In either case, the Hawaiian settlers used this shallow open water area by subdividing it into several fishponds and a salt-making area, separated by hand-built coral and rock walls.

The ponds were later subdivided by Chinese fishermen who leased the ponds to raise mullet and milkfish; over the years there were up to 18 ponds.

Some of the old dividing walls still remain their shape, but now there are eight ponds: Nuʻupia Ekahi, Nuʻupia Elua, Nuʻupia Ekolu, Nuʻupia Eha, Halekou, Heleloa, Paʻakai and Kaluapuhi.

Late-19th and early 20th-century cattle grazing over most of the Mōkapu Peninsula contributed to erosion and sedimentation, and creation of extensive mudflats.

The ponds are generally referred as Nuʻupia Ponds and are an important site for native and migratory waterfowl, shorebirds and seabirds.

Night heron, koloa, coots, stilts, moorhen, pacific golden plovers, black noddies, great frigatebirds and a large variety of migratory shorebirds, waterbirds and seabirds all utilize the wetland area. Wedge-tailed Shearwaters use the dune areas adjacent to the wetland.

Under military use since World War II, Nuʻupia Ponds became critical stilt habitat that aided their recovery from near extinction. Habitat loss and hunting throughout Hawai’i reduced stilt numbers to about 200 birds statewide by the early-1940s.

A ban on hunting prior to World War II permitted the partial recovery of the population and a high of 128 stilts was recorded in 1948 at Nuʻupia Ponds. There was also a period in late-1957 and early-1958 when, for unknown reasons, no birds were found.

Stilt populations on Oʻahu, including those at Nuʻupia Ponds, have shown a steady increase coincident with active habitat management since the 1980s. About 10 percent of the approximately 1,500 Hawaiian stilts native to the state are found here.

Red mangrove seeds first entered in the area in the early-1970s through culverts connecting the pond complex to adjoining bays. By 1974, the mangrove trees had become a pest species. Mangroves cover intertidal soft substrate in most of the tropics, but are not native to Hawaiʻi.

Red mangroves were first introduced to Hawaiʻi from Florida in 1902 to mitigate erosion after the destruction of coastal vegetation on the island of Molokai by humans and livestock.

In response to that, the Marines turned a nuisance into a training operation.

The earliest modifications to the natural marine environment of Kāne‘ohe Bay were those made by the ancient Hawaiians.

The construction of walled fishponds along the shore was perhaps the most obvious innovation.

The development of terraces and a complex irrigation network for the cultivation of taro no doubt had an effect on stream flow, reducing total runoff into the Bay.

In general, however, it can be stated that these early changes did not greatly modify the marine environment that existed when man first arrived in the area.

However, dredging in the Bay did.

Records of dredging permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers began in 1915.

Almost all of the early permits were for boat landings, piers and wharves, including the 1,200-foot wharf at Kokokahi and the 500-ft wharf at Moku-o-Loe (Coconut Island) for Hawaiian Tuna Packers (in 1934.)

Although some dredging was involved in the construction of piers and small boat basins, probably the first extensive dredging was done in 1937 when 56,000 cubic yards were dredged “from the coral reef in Kāne‘ohe Bay” by the Mokapu Land Co., Ltd.

The great bulk of all reef material dredged in Kāne‘ohe Bay was removed in connection with the construction at Mokapu of the Kāne‘ohe Naval Air Station (now Marine Corps Base Hawai‘i) between 1939 and 1945.

Dredging for the base began on September 27, 1939, and continued throughout World War II. A bulkhead was constructed on the west side of Mokapu Peninsula, and initial dredged material from the adjacent reef flat was used as fill behind it.

In November 1939, the patch reefs in the seaplane take-off area in the main Bay basin were dredged to 10-feet (later most were taken down to 30-feet.)

Other early dredging was just off the northwest tip of the peninsula, near the site of the “landing mat” (runway.) The runway was about half complete at the time of the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941.

It appears that a fairly reliable total of dredged material is 15,193,000 cubic yards.

(Do the Math … Let’s say the common dump truck load is 10 cubic yards … that’s a million and an half truckloads of dredge material.)

During the war there had been some modifications of the ponds on Mokapu Peninsula, but the shore ponds around the perimeter of the Bay were spared.

However, from 1946 to 1948 (mostly in 1947) nine fishponds with a total area of nearly 60 acres, were filled, eight of them located in Kāne‘ohe ahupua‘a in the southern portion of the Bay.

In the Great Māhele, Hawaiian fishponds were considered private property by landowners and by the Hawaiian government.

This was confirmed in subsequent Court cases that noted “titles to fishponds are recognized to the same extent and in the same manner as rights recognized in fast land.”

Many of the filled fishponds were developed into residential uses (I’ll have more on fishponds in general and some specific ones in future posts.)

There are now only 12 walled fishponds remaining of the 30 known to have once existed in Kāne‘ohe Bay and a number of these have only partial remains and are not immediately recognizable as fishponds.

The beginning date for the construction of fishponds in ancient Hawaii is unknown. The builder of the first pond is traditionally reputed to be Ku’ula-kai, “who lived in an undated period of heroes and gods”.

Since fishponds were commonplace in legendary literature attributed to the 14th through the 19th centuries, it is conjectured that they were developed sometime prior to AD 1400.

The Hawaiian fishpond was primarily a grazing area in which the fishpond keeper cultivated algae for his fish; much in the way a cattle rancher cultivates grass for his cattle.

A natural food chain can be expected to produce a ratio of 10:1 in terms of the conversion of one link by another. 10,000-kg of algae make 1,000-kg of tiny crustaceans, which in turn make 100-kg of small fish. These 100-kg of small fish then produce 10-kg of large fish, which when eaten by humans make 1-kg of human flesh.

Hawaiian ponds “are closer to the following: 10,000 pounds of algae and detritus make 1,000 pounds of herbivorous fish; 1,000 pounds of herbivorous fish make about 100 pounds of carnivorous fish, or man”. (Hiatt; Kelly)

Thus, herbivorous fish produced in Hawaiian fishponds provided man with protein 100-times more efficiently than the natural food chain.

Patient observation by Hawaiian fishermen of the habits of herbivorous fish (what and where they ate) was undoubtedly part of the great fund of knowledge held by Hawaiians about the sea and the plants and animals, which inhabit it.

‘Ama‘ama (grey mullet) was the most popular fish raised in Hawaiian walled seashore fishponds (awa (milk fish) was another).

Certainly, the Hawaiians recognized the value of walled fishponds and built them wherever conditions permitted. (Kelly) Pond types include:

Loko kuapa whose main characteristic is a seawall as its artificial enclosing feature and which usually contains one or more sluice gates.

Loko puʻuone (sometimes called loko hakuʻone), an isolated shore pond usually formed by a barrier beach building a single elongated sand ridge parallel to the coast.

Loko wai, a freshwater fishpond located inland from the shore.

Loko i’a kalo, another inland fishpond which utilized an irrigated taro plot (fish were grown in the waters flowing among the earth mounds planted with taro corms).

Loko ʻume ʻiki is similar in shape and construction to loko kuapa, however, it is a fishtrap characterized by numerous stone flanked lanes which led fish into netting areas with the ebb and flow of the tide. This last type is also the only pond where women were permitted to net.

The first three types were royal fishponds in the sense they were owned exclusively by the ruling chiefs and managed by a caretaker, or kiaʻi loko, or in some cases by a lesser chief, the konohiki, who served as a managerial overseer of both the pond and the adjacent agricultural lands.

The latter two types of ponds, while technically owned by the ruling chiefs, were the domain of families with makaʻāinana (commoner) access. Commoners’ rights to the harvest, however, were never independent of the chief’s.

The most important of the shore ponds was the loko kuapa which consisted of an arc-shaped wall extending out from the shore onto a reef flat and back again; these ranged in area from one acre to over 500 acres.

The mortar less walls were constructed of basalt cobbles and blocks, and coral fragments. These were usually several yards thick and projected about one yard above the highest tide level. Only a high chief could command the labor necessary to construct such monumental structures.

The spaces in the mortarless masonry walls made them permeable and served to reduce stress from tidal, wave, and current energy. The construction of seaward versus interior pond wall flanks was equally sophisticated.

Seaward flanks were inclined slopes which further permitted the seawall to withstand wave energy and to absorb, per square inch, more energy than a more vertical alignment.

In 1848, when King Kamehameha III pronounced the Great Māhele, or land distribution, Hawaiian fishponds were considered private property by landowners and by the Hawaiian government.

This was confirmed in subsequent Court cases that noted “titles to fishponds are recognized to the same extent and in the same manner as rights recognized in fast land.”

Because of their location in the coastal zone, Hawaiian fishponds are controlled by a regulatory framework where County, State and Federal agencies each exercise some degree of control over activities associated with the pond.

There is a separate chapter in the State laws (Hawaiʻi Revised Statutes – HRS §183B) that deal with fishponds. Under certain circumstances, reconstruction, restoration, repair or use of any Hawaiian fishpond are exempt from the requirements of chapter §343 (environmental review laws.) (Information her is primarily from Kelly and NPS.)

Talk to any rancher and he’ll typically say he’s growing grass, not cattle. The more grass he can grow, the more cattle he can have to harvest it.

So, too, with Hawaiian fishponds; but instead of grass, the pond grows algae. The more algae grown, the more shrimp to eat it, and small animals to eat the shrimp, and small and then larger fish to feed on the pondlife.

Practically every culture in the world has practiced aquaculture (cultivation of aquatic life forms to serve the food needs of man) in some degree.

Hawai‘i had intense true aquaculture. As far as is known, fishponds existed nowhere else in the Pacific in types and numbers as in prehistoric Hawai‘i.

Only in the Hawaiian Islands was there an intensive effort to utilize practically every body of water, from the seashore to the upland forests, as a source of food, either agriculturally or aquaculturally. (Apple & Kikuchi)

There were three main technological advances resulting in food production intensification in pre-contact Hawai‘i: (a) walled fishponds, (b) terraced pondfields with their irrigation systems and (c) systematic dry-land field cultivation organized by vegetation zones. (Kelly)

Hawaiian fishponds are more productive than the natural habitat of coastal reef. The primary fish selected for the ponds were herbivores, usually mullet (‘ama‘ama) and milkfish (awa.)

A fishpond is essentially a pasture, in which algae (limu) is raised as food for the selected herbivores. Cultivation of algae depends on managing the environment of the pond, including fresh water/salt water balance, adequate sunshine for algae growth and seasonal cleaning to allow a fresh growth of algae. (Hiatt; Kelly)

Since the types of algae that mullet consume grow best in brackish water. Hawaiian walled fishponds were often located (a) on the shoreline near the mouth of a stream, (b) where fresh water escapes in springs along the shore, or frequently (c) in the sea. (Kelly)

The general term for a fishpond is loko (pond), or more specifically, loko iʻa (fishpond). Loko iʻa were used for the fattening and storing of fish for food and also as a source for kapu (forbidden) fish.

Loko kuapā, what we consider the typical coastal fishpond, are artificially enclosed by an arc-shaped seawall and containing at least one sluice gate (mākāhā.)

Loko pu‘uone are formed by development of a barrier beach paralleling the coast, and connected to the ocean by a channel or ditch; it’s a shore fishpond containing either brackish or a mixture of brackish and fresh water.

“The large salt or brackish water ponds, entirely enclosed, have one, two or four gates called mākāhā. These are of straight sticks tied on to two or three cross beams the sticks in the upright standing as closely as possible, so that no fish half an inch in thickness can pass them, while the water and young fry can pass freely in and out.” (McDonald)

“After five or six months fish would begin to be seen in the loko kuapā. During the high tides of ʻOle (ʻOle kai nui) the people who took care of the pond would rejoice to see the fish moving toward the kuapa walls, like waves of a rough sea, until the sluice, makaha, was filled with fish.”

“If the depth of the water at the sluice were a yard or more, the width of the mākāhā an anana, and the thickness of the kuapā walls an anana, this area would be filled with fish, piled one over the other until the fish at the top were dry; if a stone were placed on them it would not sink.” (Kamakau)

Fishponds, loko i‘a, were things that beautified the land, and a land with many fishponds was called a ‘fat’ land (‘āina momona.) They date from ancient times. (Kamakau)

It is not known when Hawaiian fishponds began to be constructed, but some fishpond walls have been carbon-dated to the 1400s. An estimate of 340–360 Hawaiian fishponds was noted for the period before the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1778.

An inventory in the early 1900s found 360 loko i‘a in the islands and identified 99 active ponds with an estimated annual production total of about 680,000 pounds, including 486,000 pounds of ‘ama‘ama and 194,000 pounds of ‘awa.

Loko i‘a were extensive operating systems that produced an average of 400–600 pounds per acre per year, a significant amount considering the minimal amount of fishpond ‘input’ and maintenance effort apparent by that time. (Keala)

Aquacultural fishpond technology allowed the ancient Hawaiians to move beyond mere harvesting of fish and other marine products (i.e. crustaceans, shellfish, and seaweed) to intensive fish production and husbandry.

Reportedly, a total of 449 ponds that were constructed prior to A.D. 1830, most during the prehistoric period. They were built on all the major islands.

Broad shallow reef flats or natural embayments provided an environment where ponds could be constructed easily in sweeping semicircular arcs out from the shoreline.

Along the shoreline were ponds with (kuapa, or pa) and sluice gates (mākāhā). The distinctive feature of the kuapa ponds was the sluice gates.

The mākāhā was stationary with no moveable parts. This was the technological innovation, probably an adaptation from an earlier form used in irrigation agriculture (taro), that enabled the Hawaiians to progress from tide-dependent fishtraps to artificial fishponds which could be controlled at all times of the tide.

Ponds varied in form, construction, methods of operation, and in the species of fish raised. Ponds or loko, were divided into two major categories: shore and inland ponds.

Huilua Fishpond at Kahana Valley in Koʻolauloa on the Island of Oʻahu has been traditionally classified as a loko kuapa pond. It was a working fishpond (with modifications) until the late-1960s.

Huilua Fishpond is one of only six remaining fishponds out of an estimated ninety-seven such structures that once existed on
coastal Oahu and one of the few ancient Hawaiian fishponds that were still operational well into this century.

It is also one of only ten ponds left in the Hawaiian Islands which have not been denuded of their archeological sites during the course of historic coastal development. A large majority of ponds throughout the Islands have also been destroyed by natural agencies such as tsunamis (tidal waves) and sea storms.

Huilua is a shallow, brackish water enclosure of approximately 4 ½-acres that is roughly shaped as a right triangle with the right angle of the base forming the northwest or seaward corner of the pond.

The base or western wall abuts and partially deflects the effluent from the Kahana estuary as it discharges into Kahana Bay. This wall, approximately 500 feet in length.

At the extreme south end of the western wall are located two parallel mākāhā or sluice gates. The makai gate is longer by approximately 10 feet than the mauka gates.

Huilua Pond has been an important element in the long-term habitation of Kahana Valley and is expressive of that habitation. It was an important part of the valley’s cooperative subsistence economy from the late 19th Century until the late-1960s.

At that latter time, the konohiki fishing rights for Kahana Bay were condemned and acquired by the State of Hawaiʻʻi to allow public access to the bay.

Huilua Pond became a part of Kahana Valley Cultural Park, a ‘living park’ concept developed by the Hawaii Department of Lands and Natural Resources whereby approximately 150 persons, many of whom grew up there, reside in the Park.

The ancient Hawaiians believed that walled fishponds of the loko kuapa type were inhabited by moʻo (water spirits) who were also akua (gods) and kiaʻi (guardians) and relied upon them to protect the ponds in order to assure an abundance of fish.

Ritual pollution included the violation of kapu (taboos, i.e., women could not fish nor be involved in the work of the pond), neglect of ritual obligations associated with the pond, poaching, and so on.

Informants on the Kahana Valley oral history project related: ‘Huilua Fishpond has a moʻo that lives in a deep hole at the northwest corner of the fishpond where the western wall meets the northern.’

When the moʻo leaves the pond and then later returns ‘there are always dried leaves floating on the top of the water to indicate its presence’.

Oral history informants from Kahana Valley also related that their elders and grandparents propitiated the traditional fish god Kuʻula, otherwise the fish might disappear from the pond.

While the koʻa was not used within living memory, they reported that a fish stone (pohaku kuʻula) required prayers and proper care in order to keep the fish in the pond. The location of the sacred stone is not clear. (Lots of information from NPS and DLNR.)

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